Is Everybody Alright?

As some of you may be aware, I have been researching national American funerals for my PhD thesis. Well, it's on hold for the time being. I am currently working as a researcher for a documentary on... yup, you guessed it... a national American funeral.

To summarise: Following his assassination in June 1968, Robert Kennedy's body was carried from New York to Washington by a funeral train. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the tracks to watch the train pass. On board the train was Magnum photographer Paul Fusco who recorded the individuals that came to pay their respects.

We are now trying to locate the people in Fusco's photographs to interview them about their experiences of that day, and to talk about their own lives. The title of the film is taken from Kennedy's last words before he fell unconscious, and we are drawing on this to create a social document of 'ordinary' American life over the past 40 years. Kennedy's strength was that he appealed to a broad section of society and particularly amongst people that were often ignored or disenfranchised by the political system. We hope to draw out those unheard voices.

Clearly this is no easy task: I have to locate people from photographs taken 40 years ago somewhere along a 300+ mile journey. This is where I need your help. We need as much word of mouth publicity as possible: do you or anyone you know witness the train?

If you could please pass on the word and distribute these to friends, I would be enormously grateful. I am particularly trying to recruit Americans, as obviously that's who we're ultimately trying to reach, but everyone is welcome!